Abstract
Byron's life was strangely haunted by the name 'Cla[i]re'. Considerably before he had reached the point of adamantly refusing to see, or even communicate with Claire Clairmont, she herself was worrying (in a letter ofApril 1816) that her name might make her 'a person equally disgusting to you as the unfortunate Governess1.1 The 'Governess' in question was Mary Jane Clermont, Lady Byron's attendant and confidante during the separation proceedings, the scorpion/centipede Byron excoriated in 'A Sketch From Private Life' as the destroyer of his marriage: an informer and spy. There were rich ironies here. In 'Detached Thoughts', the journal Byron kept during 1821-2 in Ravenna and Pisa, he was to claim that T never hear the word Clare without a beating of the heart
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